Articles

The Art and Science of Fanatical Patient Results

I once asked world-class surgeon, long-time LogiCole client and close friend Greg Parkhurst, about what it takes to create such impressive surgical results for his patients.

Because I’ve met many of his patients over the years of working together, and they aren’t just happy. They’re fanatical about their outcomes and the way he’s changed their lives.

My layman paraphrase of his eloquent explanation:

There are so many technical aspects that go into the surgery – the technology, the measurements, the treatment types and even combinations of treatments. But creating fanatical results goes beyond that. What we do as surgeons has to be a science AND an art. It’s not just plugging numbers into a machine. It’s about understanding the patient, understanding the nuances and limitations of the treatments, knowing what they really want to be doing with their eyes, and taking all that into account when designing their treatment plan.

Art and Science. Crucial advice for any surgeon, and I would say it also extends to marketers, surgery schedulers, phone teams and more.

Sure, there are technical aspects to what we all do. But there’s also an art to it. Understanding people, what they need, how they need to be led. Intuition, influence, leadership and empathy.

For example, a question I get asked often – “How many times should we follow-up with leads?” This is a very technical, “data-based” question. While it’s a reasonable question, It’s devoid of the “art” component of followup. Which often is the most critical piece to success or failure in your conversion process.

Next Tuesday, I’m jumping on a webinar with a group of my super-smart industry friends to share Zeiss’ mega-study of digital lead secret shops. We’ll share all the data – the science – about the surprising trends they discovered.

And we’ll also get into the Art of follow-up, conversion and what needs to happen to maximize your consult bookings and out-convert your competition.

Join us to discover the Art and Science of digital lead conversion.

– Troy “Scientific Artists” Cole

PS – Rumor has it they aren’t recording this webinar. So either you or your admin / manager / schedulers (ideally multiple folks from your practice) need to register for one of these 2 times we’re doing the webinar LIVE. Click and do it now… 👆

Quality leads are made, not found

One of my dad’s favorite shows is Gold Rush on Discovery. It’s about commercial Gold miners trying to strike it big.

I’ve watched it with him a couple times, but I tend to get frustrated with the show (Seems like it’s always people fighting and expensive equipment breaking and no one ever finding much gold, but maybe I haven’t given it enough of a chance).

The prospect of “striking gold” is certainly appealing. Dig in the right place, and extract riches!

Which is how a lot of practices look at their leads. “We want more quality leads! Where can we find em?” As if they’re digging for gold.

I’m talking about the kind of leads that come in, have few questions, value your expertise, and are ready to buy.

Love those, yeah? Me too! “Where can we find more of those GOLD leads, Troy?!”

We’ll talk about that in a second.

First:

Are there certain referral sources that lend themselves to more “Quality Leads” than others? Totally.

Say a prospect comes in today, and he says 2 of his friends have had LASIK with you within the last month. Well it’s a safe bet he falls into the “Quality Lead” category.

The dude is gonna be easier to book for surgery than say someone who stumbled across you on social media (generally speaking).

But WHY? WHY is he easier to schedule?

Because he knows more, right? He’s already asked his friends all about it – did it hurt, how long did it take, how much did you spend, was it really worth it, etc? He’s pre-educated.

So it’s NOT just who he is. It’s NOT just the fact that he was referred by 2 friends. Because before his friends had LASIK, he was another random guy on the street. Another “regular lead.”

But this guy had a bunch of questions, and once those were addressed (by his friends), he transformed into what many would call a “Quality Lead.”

He was not BORN as a Quality Lead. No one is. He was MADE into a Quality Lead.

RE-READ THIS 👆

Because quality leads aren’t found. They’re made.

Some are created by their environment:

The prospect’s friends / family who have had the procedure before.
The radio spots they’ve heard about you every day for the last 3 years on their favorite station.
Seeing your sponsored testimonial posts on social media over and over

These are all environmental forces that (in part) elevate a person to “Quality Lead” status.

That said, in many cases, you have to take a proactive approach in creating quality leads.

More outreach. More education. More digging. More asking questions. More finding the WHY. More finding the WHY NOW.

Discussing the benefits and consequences of their decisions around having / not having a procedure.

And the beauty of it is this – since quality leads are made (not simply discovered or stumbled upon), you actually have some control over the process. It’s like if the guys on the Gold Rush show could camp out at a cool spot in Alaska and say, “OK, we like it here. Let’s just set up shop and go to work MAKING gold.”

They can’t do that. But you kinda can.

But HOW do you go about creating quality leads? That’s a topic for another day.

Specifically, that day will be next Tuesday, 5/21, at 12p Central of 7p Central. Because I’m jumping on a Zoom with my friends Michael at Glacial, Dan at Lead Engage, and the Zeiss BDM Queen Carol-Anne to deep dive on this very topic.

See, Zeiss undertook the most in-depth Digital Lead Secret Shop study ever conducted in the industry (to my knowledge). 300+ secret shops across 100+ practices, with thousands of datapoints gathered and analyzed.

So if you want to see what’s happening in the industry, and hear of ways you can create more Quality Leads for your practice, tap one of the links below and register.

From Click to Consultation: Out-Convert Your Competition in the New Economy – 12 Central | 7p Central

– Troy “Gold ~~Digger~~ Maker” Cole

PS – They’re not planning on having a replay of this event. And you’re gonna get the most out of these events when you show up LIVE anyway. So pick a time and register. And forward it along to your team and have them join us too.

Discounts vs. Offers (and what you should do)

I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” – Don Corleone, The Godfather

Had a conversation recently with a practice about their marketing, and I asked them “What kind of offers do you guys promote?”

The response: “Oh, we don’t do any discounts.” (which isn’t what I asked, but I understand why they responded that way)

When you start talking about discounts, promos, offers, specials… the water gets murky quickly.

So let’s clear it up today. Because these are not all the same things. 👆

To keep it simple, we’ll talk about Discounts vs. Offers.

What is a discount? No surprise here, it’s exactly what it sounds like. A discount is when you take money off the retail price of your service.

A discount is a “price reduction” to the general public, and a “profit reduction” to you. This is because rarely are you able to cut costs when you discount, so the $$ reduction comes right out of your bottom line.

So that’s a discount, and it’s no surprise some practices don’t want to do them. I’m not a huge fan of discounts on surgery. At the same time, they may be necessary to garner attention in your market depending on competitive activity, etc.

But a “discount” and an “offer” are not the same. In fact, a discount is a type of offer, but there are many others.

An “offer” is simply a presentation of deliverables in exchange for a set investment level.

When your car dealer says he will give you $X for your trade-in, got you X% financing, added a year to your extended warranty and threw in a full tank of gas… he made you an offer. Notice I didn’t say anything about a discount.

Offers can consist of many elements, including:

Special financing rates
Upgrade to a specific laser
Upgrade to a specific lens
Inclusion of drops / post-op products
Inclusion of pre- and post-op visits
Lifetime vision warranty / enhancements for life (or for X years)
Automatically entered to win X prize when you have surgery
Package surgery with desirable products, like complimentary designer sunglasses

Now that I’ve given you some examples, you can probably think of more.

“But Troy, we already include some of those in our surgery package.” Great! Break them OUT of the package, and then have your sales team work them back IN as part of the offer. Build the offer in front of the patient.

For example, you would go from “This comes with 2 years of free enhancements”

to “I’m also going to include 2 years of enhancements as part of your surgery package. Normally this would be an additional $X00, but we’re including it at no additional cost to you.”

See the difference? The first one is just listing a line item. The second one is you actually building an offer. And you don’t have to change all your materials to do this, you can simply change your scripting.

(We’re diving more into this in our coaching group this week, so our surgery schedulers have a great feel for how to present the features of surgery packages more like an “offer”)

And if you DON’T already do some of these in your surgery packages, now is a great time to start.

Why use offers in the first place?

Sets you apart from other practices
Gives you creative ways to pique your prospective patients’ interest
You can put time constraints around them, always creating urgency
Gives you new ways and reasons to reach out to non-converted prospects
ETC ETC ETC TONS OF REASONS

Cool? So if you haven’t been using offers because you don’t discount, I hope this has given you new ways to introduce offers into your practice. And if you’d like to collaborate on creating an offer for your practice, hit reply and get the convo started.

– Troy “Offer on the Table” Cole

PS – Speaking of offers, we do have an OFFER right now for one of our E3 coaching programs. This is specifically for practices who KNOW their team would benefit from communications / conversion coaching, but they feel like they need to wait for the “right time” – either too busy, trying to hire someone right now, not sure if their current team is the ideal fit, opening a new office, etc.

If that’s YOU, reply and let me know WHY now is not the right time, and I’ll share more details with you. It’s totally NO pressure, NO obligation. I just know a lot of practices are in this boat right now, so we’re doing something to help them get the coaching they need so they can stop losing consult and surgery opportunities NOW.

Eavesdrop on my convo re: conversions

Got an email from Zeiss Queen Carol-Anne this morning re: MedSpas.

She and I had a great convo earlier this week about conversions, and she followed up this interesting screenshot from an article on MedSpa business growth.

The interesting part is that we tend to blame the economy for current refractive volume, while MedSpas are crediting the economy as one of the reasons for ongoing impressive growth.

Below is my unedited email that I sent back to her. After writing it, I realized you would get value from it too.

Enjoy your weekend!

=============

MedSpa is interesting because there’s always some new injectable / treatment (so there’s constant fanfare around it), lots of opportunities for cross-sells, it’s a recurring business model by nature, and you can have the services at lower price points. Not saying we in refractive can’t learn from any of these elements, but there are differences.

Big difference isn’t in the data, it’s in the approach. MedSpas aren’t getting leads and saying “Hey, well if you think you might wanna come in and get those wrinkles taken care of, just let us know!” But you see that a lot on the LASIK side. Needy girlfriend/boyfriend style. Shy, hopeful, PICK ME.

So gross.

No, the good medspas are like “Hey, got your request to get BOTOX, let’s get you in here and take care of that. Can you be here at 3p today?” And it’s MOVING. FORWARD. MOMENTUM. ASSUMPTION that they want to fix whatever they reached out to you for.

That approach the big differentiator. Forget the economy. When the economy’s good, you can still suck. When it’s bad, you can still rock.

What even is “The Economy” anyway? You can’t picture it. You can’t wrap your mind around it. “The Economy” is not something humans encounter on a daily basis. It’s a boogeyman, it’s not real, and it doesn’t matter.

You can picture a $9 carton of eggs. You can picture a $100 tank of gas. And those are real. And are they affecting buying decisions? Probably.

But to be clear, I’m not speaking about The Economy in generalities. I’m talking specifically about patient interactions, and how The Economy comes into play.

Does it serve us to think “The economy is bad, so this person probably isn’t gonna book.”? Not at all. And in fact, we’re self-sabotaging when that’s our mindset. If a thought doesn’t serve you, then scrap it. Pick a different mindset.

70% of the coaching we do in our Green Room community – our lessons, our Mindset Mondays, our scripting, our role play calls, our Jam Session coaching calls, etc – is centered around building a rock-solid mindset that’s unaffected by the economy, a patient’s personality style, objections or comparisons to other practices.

Yes, it’s important to know the tactics, and we certainly teach those. But most importantly it’s the mindset and approach.

Think about it – EVERY LEAD our practices talk to has reached out to them in some way. We aren’t COLD CALLING. And on top of that, the product is FANTASTIC. And our clients are best-in-class providers.

So when team members start to understand that… and they think “OF COURSE you want to solve your problem, OF COURSE you want to solve it now, and OF COURSE you came to the right place to get that taken care of…and it’s my job to help you figure out creative ways to fit it into your schedule and budget and make it happen.” THIS is the game changer.

The fun part for us is that we get to lead them into that. We see the light bulbs go on. And we’ve helped anxious, shy schedulers turn into confident, patient-booking rockstars once this approach is installed into their mental firmware.

“Approach” is the biggest opportunity for any practice that wants to improve their conversions. It’s just like the approach of a big league hitter in a baseball game. The battle is 90% won or lost in your head before you ever step up to the plate.

I’d apologize for the long email, but I’m not sorry. It’s too important. I gonna start sharing more about this. Thanks for stoking the fire! 🔥

T

Pitbull & Personality Profiling

Outliers meeting was in Miami last weekend. You wanna talk about a BLAST…

The Man, the Myth, the Legend Rob Melendez knows how to do it right. Shout out to him, his staff and Program Chairs on a great weekend focused around helping practices continue to grow, thrive and make a bigger IMPACT on the world.

Phenomenal location, incredible speakers, food was 🔥, entertainment was a blast. The VIBES (and you know I like vibes) were perfect.

So if you missed it, you MISSED it. Let the FOMO settle down, and keep your eyes peeled for next year’s meeting announcement.

Check this out…

Night 1 of the weekend was a Miami Vice themed event, and there was actually a “best-dressed” competition.

Your boy Troy busted out the linen suit from our beach WEDDING, paired it up with a teal shirt and aviators, and took home the votes for Miami Vice best dressed.

Not only that, but people were calling me “Pitbull” all weekend. You be the judge…

(And yes, it didn’t hurt that I had the hottest date on South Beach…)

So let’s talk about Pitbull for a second.

Dude is an internationally renowned recording artist (one of his nicknames is literally “Mr. Worldwide”), and he’s had a prolific career.

He’s sold more than 25 million albums, sold-out the largest stadiums in the world, and his music can be heard in any ballpark, bar, club, restaurant, sports venue, you name it.

And a big part of his success is his BROAD appeal. He sings in English and Spanish, infuses traditional club-style beats with Latin flavor, and has relatable lyrics that easy to learn and fun to sing.

Using this winning formula, he’s amassed 100s of millions of fans ranging from 19-year-olds in dance clubs to 40-somethings to baby boomers and beyond.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have the same type of appeal across all the demographic ranges for the procedures you perform?

One stark difference is that Pitbull’s music is almost always experienced communally. Meaning a bunch of people are together when they hear it. And the songs may appeal to different people for different reasons, but the commonality is that everyone is ENJOYING IT together.

(Much like the dance party that broke out during the Night 2 formal dinner at Outliers…)

In contrast, when you’re doing a vision correction consultation, it’s not communal. It’s personal. A broad approach doesn’t work. We want to get more specific, zoom in your prospect’s specific needs, desires and communication style.

How do you do that?

That’s where DISC Personality Profiling comes in. You’ve probably heard of DISC, and may have even used it.

Susan and I opened the Outliers meeting on Saturday morning with a fun, interactive presentation on our DISC for Doctors Communication System. And while many people had “done DISC” in some form or fashion, most were happily surprised to discover how we use this model in the sales process with patients.

How in about 60 seconds, you can pinpoint someone’s personality style, meet them where they are and speak their language. Yes. it’s basically a communications hack. And it works insanely well to build rapport and increase conversions, once you know the framework, what questions to ask and what to look for.

The broad approach works great for Pitbull. But your patients need something more. More personalized. More focused. More tailored to their priorities.

And for many practices, HOW to do this has been a big mystery for a long time. But not anymore, thanks to DISC for Doctors.

Alright, enough shenanigans for today. I recommend you crank up some Pitbull and get your office groovin, and if DISC for Doctors sounds interesting to you, hit me back for more info.

– Troy “Pitbull-ish on DISC” Cole